Whoever succeeds Yahya Shinuar could have a profound impact on the direction of the group and the prospect of reviving negotiations with Israel.
On the military side, a likely candidate would be Yahya’s younger brother, Mohammed Sinwar, according to Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian Authority negotiator and senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy.
Young Sinuar is believed to be as ruthless as his older brother, says Omari, but he is weightless and may have difficulty joining the military wing, which was greatly degraded during the war.
Possible choices from the political wing include Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the Hamas Politburo and one of the group’s senior negotiators in Doha, and Khalid Mashal, a longtime senior Hamas official.
Both Hagia and Mashal were considered favorites to replace Haniya as political leader after his assassination, with the position eventually going to Sinouar. The latter’s great advantage was that he spent his entire life in Gaza – at least in the years he was not in prison.
The man who wanted to remove Hamas from Tehran
Mashal, who has not lived in the Palestinian territories since he was 11 and divides his time between Doha and Cairo, is seen as more susceptible to external pressure than Sinwar, which could provide an opening for negotiations. However, it is unclear how this will translate to Gaza, where it is not under militant control.
Hamas’ relationship with Iran, its main supporter, could be complicated if Mashal becomes the new leader. Mashal supported a Sunni-led uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, which drove him away from Tehran. “Mashal has long wanted to move Hamas away from the Iranian axis and toward the Arab axis,” Omari told Foreign Policy. It is unclear whether relations between the two sides have been restored.
Undead
Whoever is destined to succeed Shinuar, the only certainty is that they are already in Israel’s sights. The military and Netanyahu have made clear that they will seek to eliminate the terrorist organization’s entire leadership group. For analysts, all potential successors are dead.
After all, there is the example of Hezbollah. After the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Israel did not take long to kill his supposed successor, Hashem Siafuddin, but and the one considered as… successor to the successorIbrahim Amin Al Said.